Essays From West of 98: Afterglow
Reflections on local culture from the firelight
This is about as close to a “live” newsletter as you could get. I am writing it in the literal afterglow of “Bulldog Bonfire 2024,” Stamford’s first homecoming bonfire in about 15 years, while these thoughts are fresh on my mind.
A homecoming bonfire is an old tradition in Stamford. I do not know when it started, but the living alumni who have fond memories of bonfires include folks who graduated from Stamford over 60 years ago. I remember them myself as a child. In the mid-to-late 1990s, the bonfires began to fall by the wayside. They became more difficult to conduct during the intense drought of that era and the accompanying burn bans. School and city officials expressed concerns about safety. A few “freelance” bonfires occurred but the official ones were no more. During the fall of 2001, my senior class resurrected the official bonfire tradition. Building that pile with my friends remains one of my fondest memories of high school. Another bonfire was undertaken in the late 2000s, but that was that.
Until now.
A few weeks ago, the idea popped up via a friend to resurrect Stamford’s bonfire tradition with a pile of brush that had been cleared adjacent to the old Booker Washington School, Stamford’s long-closed segregated school that is currently undergoing a cleanup project. Some quick conversations occurred last week with Stamford school officials and the Stamford Fire Department. Volunteers pitched in to add pallets and other wood, then push and stack the pile to get it ready to light.
Stamford’s homecoming festivities traditionally include a “lights out” pep rally on the downtown square on Tuesday night. As they finished the pep rally, we splashed accelerant around the base of the pile half a mile away. The crowd arrived, I said a few words, the cheerleaders led a few chants and then the volunteer firefighters set it ablaze with drip torches.
As the intense heat permeated the air, the crowd roared alongside the flames. Only the oldest high school students were alive for the last bonfire, but they certainly were not old enough to remember it. This was the first homecoming bonfire for most of Stamford’s youth and their awe and enthusiasm was evident.
I thought of the poet Virgil.
Back in 2023, my friend
(an occasional guest star of these newsletters) wrote a letter to the then-new mayor of Amarillo. He wrote about Caesar Augustus’s efforts to create a mythology to unify and inspire the Roman people. This was the crux of my essay about high school graduation in 2023, which I re-published earlier this year. Augustus’s quest led to Virgil writing “The Aenid.” That led to Seth writing one of the most powerful paragraphs that has ever shaped my view of community improvement:“But he also understood the Romans needed to want to be Romans. They needed to be proud of their history and where they came from. They also needed to have an idea about who they were as a people. What were the virtues that made them Roman? This wasn’t something that could be forced upon citizens. This needed to be given as a gift, something in which they could take pride, and something they found beautiful.”
People want to be from a place. They NEED to want to be from a place. Everyone is technically from somewhere, but too many of our somewheres now look like everywhere else. They have the same chain restaurants, the same big-box stores, the same cookie-cutter home designs, the same highway construction. Take a snapshot of a random street in a suburb of Dallas-Fort Worth. The man-made aspects are largely indistinguishable from a random street in a suburb of Los Angeles or Atlanta. This is no mere broadside against suburbia.1 The same everywhereness has infiltrated into the exurbs and rural communities of America, too. It is easy to think about what your town “needs” and realize that your wish list is wandering dangerously close to turning your town into just another Everytown, USA.
We’ve got enough of those.
I do not have time to go into the negative psychology and wellness associated with a group of people who long to be from somewhere in a world where everywhere looks like everywhere else, but it is a very real root of our dysfunctional society and culture.2
We need communities in which our people of all ages can take pride and have a shared life experience that they find special and beautiful. It does not have to be perfect. It won’t be perfect. But it can be a place that is worthy of its people wanting to be from there. The reaction to our resurrected homecoming bonfire over the past week has illustrated that very ideal. Older folks remember their bonfires and cherish those memories. They long for the younger generations to have the same experience. The middle age bracket (I guess that’s me) lived through the ending of the bonfires and either loved them or have regretted never getting to experience them, depending on age. The younger residents of Stamford never saw a homecoming bonfire until tonight.
Tonight, each generation shared in the unique spirit of a homecoming bonfire. They felt the same incredible heat and watched the same flames quickly dance through the pile of wood. They cheered with the cheerleaders. They clapped for the homecoming queen nominees and for Stamford’s new status as the #1 team in the state football rankings for our division.3
I won’t say that everyone in the crowd wanted to be from Stamford tonight, because it was a large crowd. But the spirit was certainly evident throughout the generations, and that’s a critical thing to keeping a community alive. If the older folks love the town and the youth hit the road as soon as possible, you might as well lock up the doors and turn off the lights. If the town has no appreciation for its heritage and traditions, it quickly morphs into Everytown, USA. The younger generations can only build, renew, and perpetuate the traditions of the local culture so long as the older generations actually teach them the traditions and help carry them on.
Tonight, we carried an old tradition into Stamford’s future. This will not be the last homecoming bonfire. Community leaders are resolved to restore the tradition permanently. One day, all those youth in the audience will be the community leaders teaching it to younger generations and helping them soak in the afterglow and the powerful feeling of wanting to be from a place.
Check out the September edition of The Prairie Panicle, with my new reading/podcast recs and the books I’m currently reading!
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and the Rural Church and State and West of 98 podcasts. Contact James through this website and subscribe to him wherever podcasts are found. Check out the West of 98 Bookstore with book lists for essential reads here.
Lest anyone think I’m getting soft on this point, it is absolutely intended absolutely as a broadside against the concept of suburbia. But it’s not ONLY that.
For more on this topic, I recommend “Why Are We Lonely?” at Plough by Joey Hiles. I’ve written about this topic before.
Stamford has 6 state championships in football (1955, 1956, 1958, 1959, 2012, 2013) and an illustrious history as one of the winningest 2A programs in Texas high school history, but an in-season #1 state ranking is a rarity in the modern age. (And yes, before you fact check me, the 1959 state title was “officialy” stripped by the UIL for using an ineligible player, giving Stamford that distinction with only one other team, the infamous 1988 Dallas Carter Cowboys of “Fright Night Lights”, but Stamford refused to renounce the title, our opponents in that game refused to claim the title, and we still possess the trophy.)
The importance of place is something I think about often, and write about slightly less often. I’m glad I found your newsletter to be reminded there are others who feel similarly inclined.
Traditional wants in a community are as important as traditional needs in a community. Truly sticking to the roots of those that worked so hard to stay afloat is where the love that so many seek after can be found. What a wonderful read on a Sunday Evening listening to the rain and reflecting on the growth of our community as a whole. This read was a great reminder to have a moment of "sit back" and enjoy the little things in life, so the bigger things in life have room to bloom!